Art and all that stuff

Sunday, 29 December 2013

One of our favourite walks when we are in the UK is along part of the Ribble Way following the course of the River Ribble. The part we do regularly is from West Bradford bridge along the northern bank of the Ribble to Grindleton bridge and then return down the southerly bank.

Sunday, 22 December 2013

The third in the 'series' is from a loose recipe card I have had for many years. It was most probably from a set given free in one of the weekend newspaper supplements.The dish is Oriental Pork, which is pork (I used pork fillet) marinated in soy sauce and red wine for several hours and then cooked with grated fresh ginger, carrot, leek, and green pepper with frozen peas added at the end.

The pork marinade...

The ingredients.

Cooking the pork, which is then removed from the pan.

Frying off the vegetables.

With the meat and liquids back in the pan..

and the peas added

The finished dish served with basmati rice... yum yum.

Elizabeth loved it that much she has requested a large batch for our Boxing day meal with the family... So it looks like I will be BACK in the kitchen!!!

Thursday, 19 December 2013

As last year we will not be sending Christmas Cards but instead making a donation. This year it will be to two charities which support epilepsy, Headway and Epilepsy Action as coincidentally we both have offspring affected by the condition.

Our celebrations started early this year with a meal - meeting up with two fellow bloggers, Gaynor and Jean, not in France as we normally would, but back in the UK. That seemed quite odd but it was lovely to have the chance to meet up before they both set off to spend Christmas overseas...

Since then our days have been filled with preparations for the big event. The sprouts are on to boil and the turkey is basting as we write. We've taken the bang out of the crackers to conform with H&S over here and now all that remains is to open our presents on the day. As we both know what we have bought for each other ... that could be interesting, but I'm sure we'll make it fun!

Monday, 9 December 2013

Early this afternoon we reached a milestone we could never have foreseen when we started writing our blog...

100,000 page views since we started back in January 2011!

Thank you to our readers and particularly those who have added their comments over the years. We very much appreciate your participation. And if you were looking at the blog around 2:30pm you could have been our 100,000th viewer!

So to celebrate, here's a short video, posted by Richelieu's tourist office, of the finale of the fireworks at the close of Richelieu's Marche Noel this last weekend...

About Us

After six years living in rural France we felt it was the right time for us to return to northwest England and begin a new chapter in our life together.
We chose to sell the house we already had in England and have a completely fresh start. After several months of property hunting we decided upon the first house we had viewed.
Having settled into the house and made friends in the area, we couldn't be more sure that we've made the right choice.
We have everything we need to hand and can walk out from the house into the most beautiful countryside and coastline.
We don't regret a minute in France but this is our future and we're loving it!